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1. Programmes for vulnerable young people

2. Funding

3. Quality assurance

Programmes for vulnerable young people

The 2023 report by the public foresight agency France Stratégie (updated in 2024) identifies the following policies as having an impact on the social mobility of young people, including those from excluded or marginalized backgrounds:

• Educational guidance (see Chapter 6 “Education and Training”);
• Academic support (see Chapter 6 “Education and Training”);
• Means-tested grants in higher education (see Chapter 6 “Education and Training”);
• Work-study programmes (alternance);
• The training obligation up to age 18 and second-chance schemes (“dispositifs 2e chance”) (see Chapter 6 “Education and Training”);
• Mentoring (mentorat);
• Programmes facilitating access to information;
• The Skills Investment Plan (programme d’investissement dans les compétences – PIC) (see Chapter 3 “Employment and Entrepreneurship”);
• The Personal Training Account (compte personnel

The 2023-2027 Pact of Solidarities (Pacte des solidarités) also highlights the existence of key programmes supporting the social inclusion of young people:

The Youth commitment contract (Contrat d'engagement jeune - CEJ)

The CEJ was launched on March 1st, 2022, to strengthen the professional integration of young people who are furthest from employment. It replaces the Youth Guarantee (Garantie jeunes) and continues the efforts initiated under the '1 young person, 1 solution plan'. Through this initiative, the government aimed to intensify support for vulnerable populations.

The CEJ offers a personalized pathway to promote a rapid and sustainable return to employment for young people who are neither in employment, nor education, or training (NEET). It also aligns with the national strategy to combat poverty (Pact of Solidarities), which mobilizes specific resources in favor of highly vulnerable youth.
This system is overseen nationally by the Ministère du Travail and implemented locally by France Travail and Missions Locales.

The CEJ targets young people aged 16 to 25 (up to 29 for individuals recognized as disabled workers) who are unemployed, not in training, and facing long-term barriers to employment. It establishes a personalized 6 to 12-month pathway—up to 18 months for the most vulnerable—featuring 15 to 20 hours of weekly support. The support is continuous and delivered by a dedicated advisor. Each young person also receives an in-depth interview to identify their skills, motivations, and barriers across many areas, including housing. Additionally, they may receive a monthly financial allowance (up to €561.68 in 2025), subject to means-testing and compliance with the contract’s terms. This allowance can be combined with low earned income (up to €300/month).

Since 2022, the CEJ has reached a large number of its target youth and shown promising results. Between March 2022 and December 2023, over 590,000 contracts were signed. The demographic analysis shows that 68% of beneficiaries are under 21, 89% have no higher education diploma (45% have no diploma at all), and nearly 20% live in quartiers prioritaires.

On average, participants received 16 hours of activities per week. Nearly half of these hours involved supervised independent activities, and about a third were spent in work placements or short-term employment contracts. The median duration of support was around 7 months.

According to a report from the Advisory Council on Youth Policies (COJ), among youth supported by France Travail, 63% obtained a job lasting at least one month within nine months of entering the CEJ, with 43% securing contracts lasting six months or longer. For those followed by Missions Locales, 24% transitioned into “sustainable employment” (Conseil d'orientation des politiques de jeunesse (2025). Logement des jeunes : une urgence sociale !).

'1 young person, 1 solution' Plan

Among these is the 1 young person, 1 solution (1 jeune 1 solution) platform, which has received €9.7 million in funding since its creation in 2020. It brings together all services dedicated to young people seeking employment, training, civic engagement programmes, personal guidance, etc.

'1 young person, 1 mentor' Plan

Launched by the President of the Republic in March 2021, the 1 young person, 1 mentor (1 jeune, 1 mentor) plan aims to scale up youth mentoring, with a focus on the most vulnerable groups (young people in child protection services – Aide sociale à l’enfance [ASE], young refugees, young people with disabilities, youth from Priority Neighbourhoods – Quartiers prioritaires de la politique de la ville [QPV], etc.). This plan supported over 100,000 young people in 2021, then 150,000 and 160,000 in 2022, 2023, and 2024 respectively, compared to about 30,000 annually before the plan’s launch.

Youth mentoring is one of the French Government’s flagship youth policies, as evidenced by its designation as the Great national cause 2023 (Grande cause nationale 2023 : Le mentorat au service de l’émancipation professionnelle de tous les jeunes de France). Furthermore, since 2020, the State has invested over €30 million each year to support nonprofit mentoring initiatives.

This plan is implemented through nonprofit organisations that receive public funding via calls for proposals. The platform “Un jeune, un mentor” (“One young person, one mentor”) is available to support associations, prospective mentors, and individuals seeking mentorship.

Strengthening of Work-Study Programmes (alternance)

As part of the '1 young person, 1 solution Plan', an exceptional subsidy was introduced to promote apprenticeships, building on the existing system (see Chapter 3 “Employment and Entrepreneurship”). This subsidy initially amounted to €5,000 for the recruitment of a minor apprentice and €8,000 for a major apprentice. To continue supporting apprenticeships, this measure was extended until 2024. However, the amount was reduced to €3,000 in 2024, down from €6,000 in 2023, in a context of a gradual return to a post-Covid economic situation.

As of 1 July 2025, new funding arrangements for apprenticeships will come into effect. These involve a greater financial contribution from employers. For apprenticeship contracts leading to a degree or professional qualification at bachelor’s level or higher (level 6 of the Répertoire national des certifications professionnelles – RNCP), employers will now be required to pay a flat-rate amount of €750.

In addition, to better reflect actual training costs, the funding of apprenticeship contracts will now be calculated on a pro rata temporis basis, that is, based on the exact number of training days. Until now, any month started was counted in full, resulting in higher reimbursement amounts from OPCOs (skills operators – opérateurs de compétences), beyond the actual duration of the contract.

Programs for Access to Rights

The previous national strategy for inclusion (i.e. 2018–2022 National Strategy for the Prevention and Fight Against Poverty) introduced several measures — still in effect — aimed at young people and/or populations in situations of severe precarity:

• The extension of mandatory support for young people from Child Welfare Services (Aide sociale à l'enfance - ASE) from the age of 18, the legal age of majority, to 21, through the Law of February 7, 2022;
• Since 2021, the general rollout of Unconditional Local Social Reception Centers (Accueils sociaux inconditionnels de proximité – ASIP), which are physical listening spaces across France providing first-level information on access to rights and, where necessary, referrals to specialized services;
• The “Zero Non-Take-Up Territories” experiment (Territoires zéro non-recours), which includes 39 areas testing solutions to reduce non-take-up of rights in 2026;
• The automatic renewal of complementary health insurance (complémentaire santé solidaire) for recipients of the Active Solidarity Income (Revenu de Solidarité Active – RSA);
• The creation of 100 health centers and community health houses in priority areas;
• The implementation of full reimbursement for optical care, hearing aids, and dental care ('100% santé' Plan).

Funding

The Pact of Solidarities (Pacte des solidarités)

Through various budgetary programs—particularly programs 102 and 304— several measures of the Pact of Solidarities, contribute to the objectives of youth policy.

Preventing and combating poverty from an early age is a central focus of the Pacte des solidarités, which groups all related measures under its first axis. As such, the Early Childhood Innovation Fund, the Emergency Plan for Homeless Children, policies to combat child malnutrition, policies supporting children’s access to leisure activities and holidays, and parenting support policies all contribute to this goal, with nearly €33 million in 2024 from program 304 allocated to this policy.

Source : Document de politique transversale (2025). Annexe au projet de loi de finances pour 2025. Politique en faveur de la jeunesse.

The Youth Engagement Contract (Contrat d’engagement jeune – CEJ)

The above-mentioned schemes are funded by French public funds, with the notable exception of the Youth Engagement Contract, which receives both national and European co-funding.

In terms of professional integration, the 'Youth Engagement Contract for Disconnected Youth' (CEJ-Jeunes en Rupture), included in the Pacte des solidarités, is now implemented under the outreach and re-engagement program set forth in Article 7 of the Full Employment Law of December 18, 2023. This change aims to reach young people who are furthest removed from the labor market and to strengthen the support provided to them through Local Missions, France Travail, Employment integration facilities (Établissement pour l’insertion dans l’emploi - ÉPIDE), and associations specialized in holistic support. The goal is to assist 50,000 young people by 2027.

Youth Employment

Precisely evaluating the financial effort made by public authorities in favor of youth employment remains complex. The Ministry of Employment does not currently have a realtime tracking tool to record all related expenditures, whether for youth-specific programs or those under general law.

In this context, and in the absence of consolidated data, the Cour des comptes adopted a restricted methodology focused solely on schemes explicitly targeting young people: specific support programs (Local Missions, CEJ, EPIDE, Second Chance Schools), subsidized contracts reserved for this group, and apprenticeship hiring incentives.

Based on this methodology, public spending on youth employment reached €7.3 billion in 2023—more than double the amount in 2017 (€3.4 billion). 

Source : Cour des comptes (2025). Rapport public annuel de 2025, Les politiques publiques en faveur des jeunes.

Measures to Support Apprenticeships (alternance)

The overall increase in public spending for youth employment is largely explained by the significant rise in investments in apprenticeships. Between 2019 and 2021, the allocated budget for this sector almost quadrupled. This increase is primarily due to exceptional measures introduced as part of the "1 Young Person, 1 Solution" plan, launched in summer 2020 in response to the health crisis. The European Union contributed to this funding through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).

In addition, the reform introduced by the law of September 5, 2018, fundamentally transformed the economic model of apprenticeships. This structural shift led to a substantial increase in public spending on training and apprenticeships, which rose from around €2 billion in 2018 to €6 billion in 2021 (Source : Cour des comptes (2025). Rapport public annuel de 2025, Les politiques publiques en faveur des jeunes).

A new plan to reform apprenticeship funding came into effect on July 1, 2025. This reform is based on two pillars: prioritizing apprenticeship funding according to labor market needs, and improving the financial sustainability and economic model of apprenticeships.

Youth Access to Information

To ensure young people have access to reliable, up-to-date, and neutral information—while also contributing to their media and information literacy—the State supports the structuring of the Youth Information network (Réseau Info Jeunes – IJ). In this context, a €2.9 millions grant will be allocated in 2025 to the Youth Information and Documentation Center (Centre d’information et de documentation jeunesse – CIDJ). This funding will support the center’s multi-year action plan, ensure the association’s operations, and support its specific missions—particularly the national technical coordination of the IJ network and the updating and enhancement of its documentary database.

This grant also covers the CIDJ’s activities in its role as Regional Youth Information Center (Centre régional de l’information jeunesse – CRIJ) for the Île-de-France region.

Source : Document de politique transversale (2025). Annexe au projet de loi de finances pour 2025. Politique en faveur de la jeunesse.

Quality assurance

See Chapter 4 - Section 4.3 'Strategy for the social inclusion of young people' - Part 'Monitoring and evaluation of the Pact".